The self-healing material that could change tech | MEDICUS 2025 Issue 1

Marvel-ous science: The self-healing material that could change tech

Asst Prof Tan Yu Jun (right) with Dr Zhang Xuan (left), the first author of the research paper, demonstrate how MINE can be used as an e-skin // Credit: College of Design and Engineering, NUS

It’s a moment we’ve all dreaded—watching in slow motion as our phone tumbles to the floor, only to pick it up and find the screen shattered. But what if your device could heal itself, like a scene straight out of a sci-fi movie?

That future might not be far off, thanks to a novel material created by a team of engineers led by Assistant Professor Tan Yu Jun from the College of Design and Engineering at NUS.

Named MINE, or Magneto-IoNo-Elastomer, the material is not just capable of self-healing, but is also transparent, stretchable, magnetically responsive and conductive.

“What’s exciting is that we’re the first to combine all these properties in one material,” said Tan, who is from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

“People are imagining devices that fold into small shapes, stretch out when needed or offer entirely new interactive experiences. With MINE, we’re making those possibilities more achievable.”
Asst Prof Tan Yu Jun

“People are imagining devices that fold into small shapes, stretch out when needed or offer entirely new interactive experiences. With MINE, we’re making those possibilities more achievable,” she explained.

To produce MINE, Tan’s team embedded magnetic ionic liquids, a type of liquid salt with magnetic properties, into a specially designed polymer.

Unlike traditional magnetic materials, which tend to be stiff and opaque, MINE is soft, elastic and transparent, even when loaded with a high concentration of magnetic liquids. In addition, the magnetic liquids also made the material stretchier and even more resilient, instead of weakening it.

Besides being highly stretchable, MINE’s remarkable properties include its ability to self-heal // Credit: College of Design and Engineering, NUS

These properties make it an ideal candidate for soft robotics and even self-repairing devices.

Reflecting on the three-year endeavour, Tan said: “It was truly an international effort. My postdoc in Singapore led the material fabrication and device demonstrations, while our collaborators in Germany tackled the theoretical aspects, like how the self-healing mechanisms work. Our colleagues in Japan contributed ideas for potential applications, such as magnetic gloves for virtual reality.”

The team hatched the idea after observing how birds like the European robin use magnetic fields to navigate long migrations.

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The European robin, which sparked Prof Tan’s idea // Credit: iStock.com / James Gledhill

The European robin, which sparked Asst Prof Tan’s idea // Credit: iStock.com / James Gledhill

“It inspired us to develop a magnetic material for emerging technologies. But we also wanted to make it truly multifunctional, and for that, we took a page out of science fiction,” explained Tan.

Their fictional muse was none other than Venom, the alien symbiote from the Spider-Man universe known for its shape-shifting and self-healing ability—but with a twist, said Tan: “Ours has an added superpower: it’s transparent.

“By combining natural inspiration with sci-fi imagination, we’re opening the door to transformative technologies that could change how we interact with the world.”

And in true Marvel style, Tan is already working on a sequel to MINE—a material she refers to as “Venom version 2”, capable of changing its state from squishy forms like slime to materials with springy texture like rubber.

Adapted by Dr Chua Li Min from the College of Design and Engineering News.